Craig Calderwood Is a self-taught artist who has been living and working in San Francisco for the past 13 years. They studied printmaking and life drawing at Fresno City College for a short period of time, though they flunked out and continued their arts education through binge watching PBS art documentaries and a rigorous studio practice. Their detailed drawings and paintings are rendered through a personal vernacular of symbols and patterns recalling the private languages that underground communities of queer and trans people have used for safety for decades, developing these patterns and symbols though historical research, personal narratives, and pop cultural moments. Utilizing low-end materials like fabric paint, found fabrics, and fiber tip pens, Calderwood flexes the intended use of their mediums, forming images whose lines and textures teeter between thread and paint, blurring not just the binaries of materials, but of their subjects.
Calderwood has been the recipient of several awards including the Eureka Fellowship, three San Francisco Arts Commission IAC grants, and recently finished the A.P.I. Residency at Mills College. In 2024, Calderwood will be creating a mural commission in SFO’s Terminal-1 with the San Francisco Arts Commission. Calderwood has shown locally, nationally, and internationally, notably at Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA, Transpalette-Centre D’Art, Bourge, France, The Luggage Store, SF, CA, and George Adams, NYC, NY.
Press release for this artist.
Residency: October 2023 - January 2024
Art Exhibition: Friday, January 19 & Saturday, January 20 & Tuesday, January 23